High and Dry

This Liberal Party stalwart's attack on John Howard's environmental
policies targets the PM's constituency.

Illustration by Micheal Mucci

Author

Guy Pearse

Genre

Nature/Environment, Society/Politics

Publisher

Viking

Pages

496

RRP

$35.0

If great tragedies tell of great people greatly flawed, then the
story told by Guy Pearse in High and Dry is surely the
defining tragedy of our times, for it tells of the Prime Minister
and what Pearse argues is the betrayal of his people. The tragedy's
roots, Pearse thinks, lie in the unbridled influence of perfidious
advisers and a leader whose vision was just too limited, and who
was perhaps a little too stubborn, to see the great menace
threatening his country.

High and Dry is not, as you might assume, the work of a
left-leaning academic, but a Liberal stalwart long immersed in the
rough and tumble of politics and industry lobbying. Indeed, Pearse
is a former Country Young Liberal of the Year who studied at
Harvard and wrote speeches for Senator Robert Hill before turning
to industry lobbying. He remains a member of the Liberal Party and
had he not chosen to write this book he may well have run for a
Liberal seat in Queensland in the coming election.

Pearse begins his book by briefly and accurately recounting the
nature of the climate change crisis and the history of the global
political and business responses to it. He then outlines John
Howard's policy response and it is here that Pearse makes a unique
contribution, for he is speaking as an insider, and the research he
undertook on and around this topic earned him a PhD from the
Australian National University.

In seeking the origins of Australia's policy stance on climate
change, Pearse goes back to the Hawke government, which he
identifies as the first to decide that it would not ratify any
international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if it
looked like harming the Australian economy. And harming here, he
emphasises, means even the slightest reduction in growth. It's a
theme that John Howard perfected and, Pearse argues, holds to this
day.

Things were not always so in the Liberal Party. As early as 1988
the Liberals were leading Labor in the progressiveness of their
greenhouse policies, and by 1990 Andrew Peacock, as part of his "A
Fair Go for the Environment" policy, personally signed a document
promising to cut Australia's emissions by 20 per cent. Even under
John Hewson, the Liberals were promising deeper cuts than was the
Hawke government. Pearse says that "at an impressionable age [these
policies] helped to justify my faith in the Liberal Party's
environmental policy credentials".

Pearse argues that, with the rise of radical right-wing
fundamentalists in the Liberal Party, these policies were swept
away. Known as Neoliberals, these fundamentalists believe that an
unregulated free market delivers the best outcomes. Howard, Pearse
asserts, is a career-long supporter of the philosophy. To compound
matters, the Neoliberals have become aligned with some Christian
conservatives, among them Cardinal George Pell, who view concern
for the environment as a new form of paganism.

The world view engendered by these ideologies left the Liberal
Party perilously ill-equipped to deal with the environmental crises
that are already plaguing the 21st century, and which will continue
to dominate the global agenda for the foreseeable future.

The Prime Minister and several of his key ministers, Pearse
asserts, have been captured by a group of industries and their
lobbyists, known as the greenhouse mafia. They have infiltrated
deep into the bureaucracy and they continue to make sure the Prime
Minister and his ministers hear nothing by way of advice but what
they want them to hear. There is consequently, Pearse says, no
debate whatsoever in cabinet on climate change. The Prime Minister
simply elucidates his policy and the party follows.

Pearse describes the think tanks, industries, bureaucrats and
individuals that provide advice to the Prime Minister on climate
change and the media outlets that propagate the resulting party
line. In the inner circle is a group that Pearse (following Clive
Hamilton) calls the Prime Minister's XI. Hugh Morgan is
characterised as team captain, while Queensland Premier Peter
Beattie is included, and so (as 12th man) is Chris Mitchell,
editor-in-chief at The Australian.

Their message has been consistent and well refined, and it was
only with the great awakening to the dangers of climate change that
occurred around September 2006 that they lost their grip on the
public sentiment.

Unfortunately, the "carbon capture" of Howard continues, and it
is leaving Australia high and dry in four ways. Pearse says "it is
threatening our environment, our economy, our national security and
our place in the world".

Pearse argues that regardless of who wins this year's federal
election, it will be extremely difficult to implement a change in
climate change policy. The bureaucracy is too thoroughly permeated
by the greenhouse mafia and the lobbying too relentless. He does
not discount the possibility, however, that either a post-Howard
Liberal government or a Labor government could, if determined,
force a turnaround.

The overwhelming sense I was left with after reading High
and Dry was that of betrayal. Pearse is so clearly a proud
Liberal, and a great patriot, who feels deeply the burden that has
fallen on him to blow the whistle on a very sorry episode in
Australian political history. Indeed, Pearse tried hard to wake his
party to the dangers of carbon capture in ways that did not entail
such a public airing of dirty linen. He assisted with the Four
Corners program "The Greenhouse Mafia", which reported on the
industries perverting government (but which did not go deeply into
government complicity), and he sent a draft of his book to the
former environment minister Ian Campbell, who returned the package
to him unopened.

High and Dry is an appeal to the Liberal constituency
to "start letting the Party know how you feel". It's a tragedy so
diligently and honestly told that Pearse, I think, cannot help but
hit his mark.